a record of the quirky, crazy, sometimes exciting and often mundane goings on of the family johnson of haymarket.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Nashville

We headed to Nashville for Easter this year. My sister Lisa and her family have lived there for 9 years now and I have only visited once, so it was long overdue. An eleven hour car ride was one of the reasons we have put the trip off for so long, and it was a LONG drive, but worth it once we go there and were greeted by Lisa, Jimmy and their six children. We set out on the 9th, Mason's birthday, so Lisa had prepared a cake for Mason. I'm not sure if he was more excited to eat the cake or just to be out of his carseat, but he was a happy camper when we got there and thoroughly enjoyed his sugary treat.

On Friday we went to the Opryland hotel, a place I've only heard about. It was magnificent, waterfalls and trees were everywhere, you could even ride a boat through parts of the hotel. I couldn't imagine staying there, it is so huge it would be easy to get lost. Thank goodness Jimmy knew his way around and could guide us through.

Later that day we experienced something that only the natives are usually lucky enough to experience- a tornado siren which means tornados are likely and you need to take cover. In the Allen household that usually means getting in a central closet, but since we were there there wasn't room enough for all of us, so we headed down to a room underneath the house and the kids all put on bike helmets. I'm not gonna lie, it was pretty scary and Cameron especially picked up on the fear aspect of it all. The poor kid was shook up until it stopped raining that afternoon.

Easter morning the kids woke up and found their baskets, then we headed to church and had our Easter meal. After that we had an egg hunt and now our kids have enough candy to last until Halloween.

Other fun things we did on the trip were to go to Franklin, a sweet little town with lots of little shops to browse, a date night just Jeremy and I, a trip to a super fun playground, Krispy Kreme, gourmet cupcakes with mountains of frosting, and a bike ride on Sunday afternoon. We had a great time and the kids are already asking when we will go back. Mason always had someone to hold him, feed him or change him and it wasn't me! All the kids had an absolute ball with their cousins and played hard the entire time. Now that we know how much fun Nashville is, I'm sure another visit isn't too far away. Thank you Allen's for a memorable Easter visit!